What is Dry Eye Disease?

Put simply, Dry Eye Disease is the state where there is too little - or the wrong balance and/or type of tears attempting to nourish, lubricate and protect the delicate cells lining the surface of your eye. Symptoms range from minor irritation and occasional blurring at the mild end of the spectrum, to an incapacitating inability to use your eyes due to fiery burning, tearing, redness, scratchiness, glaring and ultimately - irreparable damage to that delicate surface.

What causes Dry Eye Disease? 

There are two main kinds of dry eye disease:

1. Aqueous Tear Deficiency - or ATD. This is when there is too little water in the tear. Treatments vary from things as simple as consuming more water, to prescriptive eye drops, altering oral medications for other problems like high blood pressure and plugs to restrict the flow of tears away from the eyes. This sometimes also runs alongside MGD (see below) and dry eye specialists are trained to best deal with this ATD problem. Fortunately, it is a less frequent cause of dry eye, as it can be a difficult one to fix when autoimmune diseases like Sjogren’s Syndrome are contributing to the dryness.

2. Meibomian Gland Dysfunction - or MGD. This is when there is too little - or the wrong kinds of oil in the tear. This is the most common form of dry eye and the contributor in up to 85% of dry eye cases. These kits, designed by Dr. Jaccoma, are especially suited to deal with this common cause of dry eye disease.

Meibomian Gland Dysfunction (MGD)?

Each human eyelid contains 25-30 meibomian glands that secrete oils onto the eye surface with each blink, forming a lipid layer which protects the cornea and helps it to retain moisture.

Blinking activates these glands to produce the needed protective oil film covering the cornea. When individuals go without good blinking for long periods of time (a side effect of staring at a computer screen) and maintain diets deficient in Omega 3, 6 and 9 fatty acids (the essential building blocks of all good oils in the human body - including your tears), Meibomian Gland Dysfunction (MGD) can result.

Meibomian Gland Dysfunction (MGD) is progressive

As dry eye progresses, these glands become blocked by older oils which can form waxy plugs that prevent the glands from secreting the necessary oils. This old oil also serves as food for common skin germs, leading to another common problem called blepharitis - (or irritated eyelids). If these glands are blocked for long periods of time, the glands may either contaminate with skin germs and continue to secrete, which can lead to a stye (something that looks and acts like an acne pimple in the eyelid) or they can wither (atrophy) and drop out. Eventually, this can lead to permanent loss of function and increasing degrees of evaporative dry eye disease.